Panama offers reefers three-month reprieve from toll hikes

REEFER cargo have been granted a three-month delay from having to pay the Panama Canal Authority's (PCA) double-digit transit fee increases, reports London's Containerisation International.

The PCA said that following a 30-day public consultation, traffic-wide rate increases announced last April would take effect January 1, but reefer cargo would be free of them until next April.

The PCA said operators had already received concessions that froze 2010 increases and delayed new hikes until 2011, extending the old rate beyond their expiry date of April 30, 2010.

"We have listened to their feedback and have made adjustments to our pricing structure," said ACP administrator and CEO Alberto Alemn Zubieta.

Toll changes will include concessions to shipping lines carrying empties, making them exempt from a new US$8 per container supplementary charge levied on laden boxes, as well as a change of the vessel carrying capacity which rises $2 to $74 per TEU.

The cost of transiting the canal with a fully laden panamax container vessel carrying 4,200TEU will be $344,400, an increase of 14 per cent with the number of empties cutting back the cost, but ships at 85 per cent utilisation will still face with toll hikes of more than 12 per cent.

Canal tolls have nearly doubled in five years as the ACP ratchets up revenue to help pay for its $5.3 billion expansion programme. The new tariff structure means that cargo owners could be in for higher shipping costs as lines seek to recoup the cost of impending toll hikes.

This is good news to US west coast ports, which are feeling rising competition from the all water route that bypasses them and in favour of taking cargo through the Panama and even the Suez to the consumer-rich hinterlands of the US east coast.
(Source:www.schednet.com)